Local 2012 Great American Beer Festival Winners

The Brewers Association announced the results of the 2012 Great American Beer Festival (GABF) competition this past weekend.  From the press release, the competition awarded 254 medals to breweries across the United States.  The competition presented gold, silver, and bronze medals in 84 beer categories that covered 134 different beer styles.  It had 4,338 entries from 666 breweries, coming from 48 states, Washington D.C. and Guam.  This entry level makes the 2012 competition the largest to date, which comes as no surprise given the number of new breweries coming into the marketplace in the past few years.  Note that the GABF competition uses different style guidelines than authored by the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP), which have been previously discussed here as part of homebrewing competitions.  In particular, the GABF guidelines have more substyles than those of the BJCP, which also means it must draw a larger pool of judges to evaluate them.

Locally speaking, in Virginia, Devils Backbone Brewing Company is again cleaning up at commercial beer competitions. They won two golds, two silvers, and four bronzes. In fact, of the medals given to Virginia Breweries, they held 66% of the medals awarded. They include:

Gold - Vienna Lager - Vienna-Style Lager
Gold - Berliner Metro Weiss - German-Style Sour Ale
Silver - Old Virginia Dark - American-Style Dark Lager
Silver - Danzig - Baltic-Style Porter
Bronze - Gold Leaf Lager - American-Style Pilsner
Bronze - Turbo Cougar - Bock
Bronze - Ramsey's Draft Stout - Classic Irish-Style Dry Stout
Bronze - Ramsey's Export Stout - Foreign-Style Stout

This impressive win record resulted in them being named the "Small Brewpub and Small Brewpub Brewer of the Year."  Devils Backbone had been named "Champion Brewery and Brewmaster Small Brewpub" at the 2010 World Beer Cup.  It is safe to say they are doing very well.

Locally speaking, up near Jeff, there were no medals given to a Rhode Island brewery. However, in Massachusetts, the following awards were given:

Gold - Cisco Brewers - Lady of the Woods - Barrel-Aged Sour Beer
Silver - Cambridge Brewing Company - CBC Heather Ale - Herb and Spice Beer
Bronze - Jack's Abby Brewing - Smoke & Dagger - Smoke Beer

For a full listing of the competition winners, look at the GABF site, which now has a searchable database of current and prior winners (a very nice improvement).

It is a great time to be a craft beer drinker in this country.

Cheers,

TW